***
Melik Adeldek eased back in his chair at the conference table. As he stretched out his arms and folded his hands atop his head, an old rotator cuff injury flared. He winced sentimentally—no regrets. None for four years of relief pitching at the University of Georgia. None for his apostasy last year. He was a big man, and his green eyes were lively and good-natured.
“Well, admittedly, I was a little nervous coming here, Mr. Stewart,” said Melik, his voice heavy with Southern drawl. “Gencer here kept telling me ‘kill the messenger’ stories on the plane flight. No way in hell we were wearing our turbans here—wouldn’t want you to nail them to our heads a la Vlad Tepes style. But if you try to lead me toward a well to throw me in, just give me forewarning so I can haul ass the other way.”
Stewart gave a half smile that hung oddly. He looked at Melik and Gencer from the front, then craned his neck to look at them from the side, his eyes narrowing.
“We’re just like you are, Mr. Stewart. Nose, ears, and all,” assured Melik’s shorter companion. Both visitors wore blue jeans and nondescript t-shirts, and were well-muscled.
“No, you’re not.” Max smiled, his bottom lip quivering slightly.
“Yes, we are,” said Gencer. “Melik and I each had a child on the way and we had to choose between abortion or banishment. We chose the latter, so each of us and our pregnant wives were crammed on to a reeking ship provided by the U.S. government and were dumped off in Spain. There we were chosen for the Janissary Corp based on our athleticism and shipped to Istanbul to train. Right now, our children are alive and happy. And our wives are dressed in silk and lounging on pillows in splendor back in Turkey.”
“In your quarters, or those of the Sultan’s harem?” Stewart laughed feebly.
“We did what we had to do to survive.” Melik looked the old man dead in the eye. “At least my wife got to deliver her child and that child is now healthy and strong. And I have a good career in the military and am treated well.”
Max sighed and folded his sinewy arms. “Well, congratulations, my friends. You survived. Your children will be reared to loathe their own people. And the whole lot of you will live with the ignominy of conversion to the religion responsible for the death of our people in Europe and possibly in America. If the objective of human existence is merely to survive, well, I’d say you’ve won. But if it’s to survive with honor, you’ve lost.”
The door flung open, and George stormed in. Behind him strode Rick. Before the door closed, Joshua slipped in, Bible in hand.
“George, Rick, I’d like you to meet our guests—Melik Adeldek and Gencer Bursa, ruthless janissary warriors sent by Sultan Mehmed III,” Max said dramatically.
Joshua narrowed an eye and curled his lip. George slid into a chair and pounded his fist on the table. He was shaking, and his face was pale.
“Tell me your fucking names,” the Athenian demanded.
The two Muslims looked perplexedly from across the table.
“I mean your real names—your American birth names, God damn it. Before they converted you.”
“Those names are irrelevant now.” Melik looked down.
“Well, what are you? Some pillaging, Christian-killing Seljuk steppe tribesman? You sure as hell don’t look it. What do you want here?”
“To test the waters,” answered Gencer. “The liberation force will depart sometime in the near future. We were chosen to assess fifth columnist sentiment in the state of Pennsylvania.”
“Liberation force?” George laughed, his voice tense. “You mean the rape and death squad force. You two better listen to me, because I’ve met your kind before back in Greece. You think disloyalty will buy you more days to walk this hell-hole planet we live on. Well, think again. Do you think your Muslim masters really trust you? Huh? They’ll trust your children, because they got their filthy hands on them while they were still young and malleable. But do you think they give a flying shit about you? What, they trained you for a few years maybe? They’re going to use you as cannon fodder, my friends. You two, and all your buddies, are going to get conveniently wiped in the first battle you engage in. Watch and see, they’ll march you in a frontal assault up a hill or something. And by the way, you’re not real Janissaries. You’re wanna-be Janissaries. Your children, on the other hand, will proudly carry on the perfidious murder of that Order long after you’re dead.”
“We’re well on our way to becoming full-fledged Janissaries,” said the shorter man. “Besides, what other choice do we have?”
“Jesus! You have the choice of Jesus!” the pastor exclaimed. “Renounce your Islamism and return to your Christian heritage!” He laid his right hand on the Bible and extended his left hand toward the Muslims, as if to radiate them with his piety.
“A-l-l-a-h A-k-b-a-r,” retorted Gencer slowly, then ran a hand through his blond hair. “Besides, my wife and child are over there—we have vested interest in the success of Islamic armies.”
“Well, what happened to the other fathers on the boat who weren’t physical specimens, huh?” demanded George. “You know where they went—straight to some hellish slave camp. And after childbirth their wives were shucked to brothels.”
“Hey!” said Melik. “At least they weren’t forced to kill their kids with some kind of vacuum, you know? And ironically, the Janissary Corp—the true Janissary Corp,” he caught a glance from Gencer, but kept speaking, “provides one of the only environments left in Europe or America where white people can marry white people, procreate, and flourish. In fact, our sons won’t even have a choice who they marry—by Sultan’s decree they’re to marry healthy, athletic, Caucasian women and will be encouraged to have lots of children. I’ve read your literature—I know you guys are freaked out about the extinction of whites. Well, so long as the Janissaries endure, you won’t have to worry.”
“But their souls will be lost! What good is human existence if you spurn the Lord?” challenged Joshua.
“Or if you’re trained to hate your own culture and religion and destroy it wherever you find it,” added George.
“But don’t you see?” Melik laughed. “It’s not my kid’s culture—it’s not his religion. His culture is Turkic—his religion is Islam. So whether he plunders the Louvre or smokes a cathedral someday—it’s not his—it’s alien.”
“European museums and cathedrals will never be alien to him so long as the life blood of Mother Europe courses through his veins,” disagreed Max.
“Well,” sighed Gencer, “it all boils down to this. You can cling to outworn notions of racial and religious nationalism and be annihilated by the Muslim juggernaut when it steamrolls through here, or you can apostatize like we did, embrace Islam, and be on the winning side for the first time in your shitty lives. By the way, it’s a pretty damn good feeling to win, you know?”
“A good feeling to be a traitor? I’d rather put a round through my head. Actually, I’d try to put one through yours first.” The Athenian glowered.
“Whoa, there.” Melik blinked, and raised a hand. “Let’s just nip this in the bud right now before that guy flips out. I didn’t come here to make threats or to receive them. So,” he looked at Max, “if this guy’s view is representative of the FCP’s, there’s no point in us wasting anymore time here. Do you agree with him, Mr. Stewart, or are you a man of reason?”
Max’s face was grim. “You’ll receive no aid from the FCP or any of its affiliated organizations. And if I see either of you on this property again, you’ll be fired upon.”
“All right, if that’s the way it is,” drawled Melik, and stood up. “Gencer, what’dya say we go grab us some lunch.”
“No, wait a minute,” George urged, seizing a pad and pen from the table’s center. “Can you deliver a written reply to the Sultan for me?” He began to write furiously in a highly legible block print.
“If you provide one we’re obligated to do so,” Gencer said skeptically. “Just what are you writing there?”
But the A
thenian wrote on silently. When he neared the end of the page, he carefully tore along the perforations and continued on the back.
Melik looked at Gencer and shrugged his shoulders.
“So, while we await the king’s message,” the big man chuckled, “any of you boys willing to spill some beans about that vampire you have living up there in Maine?”
“Herbert Hommler?” asked Max.
“Yeah, the crazy guy in the castle.”
“Oh, I’m sure whatever limited knowledge we have couldn’t compete with the reams of data your masters must have collected by now.”
“Sultan wants him alive.” The ex-pitcher grinned. “Wants to parade him through Istanbul and humiliate the shit out of him then publicly execute him. Apparently the freak has been threatening to impale us all and drink our blood or something like that when we land.”
“Hmmm . . .” Joshua mused, his eyes scornful. “Satanic forces pitted against Sultanic forces. I’ll pray for your mutual destruction.”
“As will I,” snapped George, penned a last stanza, then looked up at the emissaries. “I first wrote this poem when I was twenty—it’ll be seared in my memory till the day I die. I submitted it anonymously to an underground Greek resistance newspaper in Athens, it was published, and it became regionally famous. Before long it somehow got around that I was the author. Well, it found its way to the Sultan’s desk, and a price was put on my head. Allegedly, my crime was for ‘insulting Turkishness.’ They came to the little hovel where my mother and I had lived since my father died in the wars, and broke down the door. I was out at the time, earning a pittance from some prize fight at the local taverna. She was home fixing me a late supper to eat after my fight. And when I walked in she was . . .” George’s eyes had drifted to a corner of the room, and were sad. Collecting himself, he pushed the paper toward Melik. “It’s written in English this time, free verse. I’m sure he hasn’t read it in years. Tell the Sultan that not only will we not surrender—tell him that we won’t be satisfied until we kick his ass out of Europe and push his colonists back beyond the Bosporus.”
“Ha!” Gencer laughed. “I’m sure he’ll find it entertaining.”
“Kinda’ like in one those cartoons from when we were kids. A few good guys are surrounded like a million to one and they demand that the bad guys lay down their arms. You guys have balls—I’ll give you that,” Melik said.
“Your analogy’s pretty revealing.” Rick sighed. “At least you have no illusions as to who the good guys are here.”
“Nor do we have any illusions who the dead guys will be.” Gencer smiled. “Good day, gentlemen.”
Later that evening, the aspiring Janissaries relaxed in a hotel room. They took turns reading the poem and pondering its implications. Melik fell asleep with the page between his thumb and forefinger, his dreams haunted by a church that was also, somehow, a captive girl.
Hagia Sophia Enchained
The cultural tapestry,
the mélange of East
and West, the diversity
abounding in arabesques
and alcoves is
bullshit. She’s in the corner,
crying, arms wrapped around
knees. Islamic script brands
her cheeks, offering sluices
for the tears that rushed
when they were new,
now ebbing like
blood. It once leached
these floors of sanctity,
Christian icons sliding
in scarlet beneath boots,
recumbent priests watching
through fixed eyes. A red world
refracted on the pulled face of a
scimitar, rearing back,
her family dead, eyes widening domes.
Watch her hands—deflecting, reliving,
scrambling on stone.
Calm her. Kneel and embrace her.
Shield her from the cordon
of minarets breathing hotly
on her skin.
Yearn to be her Atlas,
shouldering her world
so that she might roll
free in a field, hair sweeping
around her, eyes like Aegean
tide pools flashing fish.
And as she sleeps, angelic,
redistribute the weight. Turn your back
like the West; coin the Byzantine adjective.
Free your thoughts of the shackled girl,
but if you return bring her more
than a respite—bring a jailor’s key.
—George Drakos
Chapter 33
Marisela ran her hands along minerals sprouting in astonishingly refined geometries. They were vibrant crimson and effloresced horizontally from the bed of black rock wall in squareish blocks. Implanted lights behind the minerals lit them with a fire, and offered the room a glow faint enough for eeriness. Relative to the other rooms in the castle, this one was tiny—no more than fifteen by fifteen feet. An ebon coffin, opened, rested on a dais in the room’s center. The girl moved to its side, and stared groggily at the red velvet interior and large pillow.
“As early as I can remember I knew I had to sleep in one of those.” Hommler’s voice cut the silence like a stiletto. “I never had a choice, really—I’m a slave to madness.” He laughed, and his voice rang in the chamber.
“I like your crystals,” she said dreamily, and turned again to the phantasmal rocks.
“Because you’re drugged? Perhaps when you’re sober they will lose their allure.” He smiled. “Red and black are my favorite colors. The love affair I’ve had with rhodochrosite is long and sordid—my favorite mineral by far.” Hommler rested fingers on a ruddy square. “Look how it gleams. Surely, if there ever were a vampire’s mineral, it would be none other than this.”
“So much red.” She sighed, then blinked slowly.
“Such a divine color. I’ve often dreamed of swimming in blood oceans, red lapping my lips, the waves compelled not to crash by the moon, but by a great beating heart beneath the surface.”
She stared at him through dilated pupils, and a smile’s ephemera was on her face. She giggled.
“A great, palpitating heart,” he continued, “in the ocean’s murkiest, most crimson deep. That’s where I dive in my dreams.”
She felt his hand glide through her black hair.
“The heart governs the march of blood—so it, too, is sacred in my world. Have you ever seen one, beating, up close, Marisela?” He withdrew his hand from her tresses and placed it in the center of the girl’s chest, near the swell of her left breast.
“No,” she murmured, and pulled back.
“It’s a sight of beauty.”
“Oh.” She blinked again, this time more quickly.
“I can see now why the Mexican president wanted you for his son.”
“Huh?” Slowly, her perception was returning.
“Yes. Caballero broadcast his plan to me repeatedly this past month at our meetings. He was going to kidnap you and take you to Mexico City, then marry you off to his son, Diego. Your father would have plunged south, reckless in pursuit. In a theater of suitable geography, Caballero would have sprung a grand ambush and crushed your armies. Then, Diego would usurp power in Aztlan and graft it on to Mexico. Afterward, father and son probably would have attacked the western and southern U.S. in a pincer movement—though, wonder of wonders, he failed to tell me that last aspect.”
Shattered fragments of her ordeal began to jigsaw in her mind, and she gasped as she saw again the hideous face of Ishtarotha.
“Flashback?” questioned the fiend. “Well, suffice it to say that I was captivated by Caballero’s plan—enough so to make it my own.”
Suddenly, the girl raised an accusatory finger.
“Why? Why did you have to kill them?” Her mind convulsed in a horrific rewind of plasma fire and rent teenage bodies in the snow.
“You mean your friends?” He rolled his eyes. “I already told
you—my castle is not an Aztec daycare. And what better way to piss off Aztlan’s VIPs than to kill off their children? I want a raging bull kicking eastward, girl, furious and blinded by hate.”
She sent fingernails arcing upward toward his eyes in a swipe, but he intercepted her wrist. A hiss escaped between his parted teeth.
“That was close, you hellcat bitch. Do it again, and I’ll skin you alive and dress my favorite acolyte in your flesh.” He squeezed her wrist, and she winced. “I designed these power gauntlets myself. They can generate up to two tons of pressure. So the weakling who couldn’t snap a pencil one-handed can now squish steel.” He released her and shoved her away. “What should I do with you, huh? I have to keep you alive until I dispatch your father and his armies. But that doesn’t mean you’re going to just lounge around here, unscathed, munching chocolate. Part of me wants to Americanize you. But if you abandon your recalcitrance, who knows, perhaps I’ll dignify you with vampirism. Which, young heiress to the kingdom of Aztlan, would you prefer?”
“Neither!” Her shriek boomed through the tiny room. She wanted to cry again, but her tear ducts were dry from overuse. So instead she stood there, breathing heavily, and her fingers gravitated to the twin puncture wounds near the base of her neck. “I don’t want to be like you—I hate you. Or is it already too late—did you already infect me?” She craned her neck to examine the wounds.
“You watch too many movies, Marisela.” He laughed. “Conferring vampirism with a mythical bite is fascinating in theory but tough in practice. Besides, I haven’t spent time researching it—I’ve never been truly motivated to bestow this blessedness on anyone else. Admittedly, I did inject you with a heavy sedative that was dispensed through a tiny hole in each canine. I release it by pushing the roof of my mouth, like this.” He yawned his mouth and gently tapped its pink ceiling with his tongue.
“So I’m not like you?”
The Gods of Color Page 35